Editors Choice

You Don’t Have to Quit Your Passion to Heal From Chronic Pain

Symptom flare-ups often happen during periods of big expansion in your life: Stepping into a new leadership role, becoming a parent, gaining recognition for your art, starting a business, falling in love.⁠

But it’s not the expansion that causes the symptoms. It’s the tension that happens when fear rushes in to constrict the expansion. Because expanding into new and unknown levels of your life energy can be scary! Especially if you’ve been taught all your life to stay small or to fear “failure.”⁠

When flare-ups happen in the midst of a life-expanding experience, our impulse may be to step back: Maybe if we quit the job, decline the award, break up with our new love, delay the new business — maybe then the symptoms will subside.⁠

But when we do this — when we make our life smaller — our passionate life energy becomes more and more suppressed and constricted. The tension grows more intense. The symptoms are prolonged and they take over more and more of our life.⁠

Instead of trying to dampen our life energy, what if we instead turned toward the fear that is constricting it? What if we offered the fear these three ingredients of healing:⁠ Acknowledgment, empathy + love.⁠

With time, patience and consistency, those healing ingredients will eventually soften the fear. We may need extra time and rest to ease our fear, but that does not mean we’re shutting down our life and our passions. Because when fear begins to loosen its grip around our life energy, our energy begins to flow again, and life begins to feel a whole lot better.⁠

With love, empathy and encouragement — cheering for you,

💖 Anna

Anna Holtzman

Anna Holtzman is a chronic pain recovery therapist and coach based in New York City.

Recent Posts

Science Has No Borders – And Neither Should Human Potential

Here at the HIMSS AI in Healthcare Forum, held in Brooklyn—long a gateway for immigration…

18 hours ago

The Stroke That Stole My Father And the Tiny Device That Could Stop the Next One

It happened without warning. My father collapsed at home, his face slack, his words gone.…

19 hours ago

Why AI’s Future in the Health Sector Hinges on Leadership, Not Just Technology

The room was standing room only. At the HIMSS AI in Healthcare Forum, the energy…

2 days ago

Pandora’s Ghost: The Seduction of Artificial Perfection

We didn’t open the box out of malice. We opened it because we were curious.…

2 days ago

Can Doctors “Gaslight” Their Patients?

I was taken aback by the term used in the article published in JAMA Network…

3 days ago

Clinic Notes: She Taught Me Stillness

She sat across from me in the radiation oncology exam room, hands folded in her…

4 days ago

This website uses cookies. Your continued use of the site is subject to the acceptance of these cookies. Please refer to our Privacy Policy for more information.

Read More